CHICAGO – The message from interim manager Tony Mansolino and the players remaining in the Orioles clubhouse is clear: Yes, the trade deadline may have shaken things up, but the goal of winning a baseball game each day remains the same.
The Orioles, with their young core still in place, believe they still have the talent to do just that. The names on the lineup card, particularly in the middle, have changed a bit, and Mansolino will need to get creative with a bullpen missing many of its established arms.
But as Mansolino said pregame, there’s no time for licking wounds. There’s baseball to be played out in Chicago.
Trevor Rogers was more than up to the challenge. The O's offense, though, couldn't find a rhythm in a 1-0 loss to the Cubs.
Nobody seemed to be up to the challenge of settling things down more than Rogers. The lefty has been nearly untouchable in the month of July with a 1.03 ERA in four starts. The Cubs presented perhaps his biggest challenge to date.
Chicago opened up the scoring in the second. A Carson Kelly single led off the inning, and a Pete Crow-Armstrong double put two runners in scoring position with nobody away. But Rogers did well to avoid much more damage, retiring the next three batters with just one run scoring on a sacrifice fly. At the end of two frames, the Cubs led 1-0.
The third inning saw the debut of Jeremiah Jackson, one of the players called up by Baltimore after yesterday’s deadline deals. He’s one of the many players that will get an opportunity to show what they can do in the second half. He later had his first-career major league hit in the fifth inning.
That base knock was just the second of the game for the O’s at that point, though. The first was a Jackson Holliday single in the top of the third. Through six scoreless innings, it was a dramatic 180 from what we’ve seen out of the offense in the last week. In their last seven games, Baltimore had produced a whopping 66 runs, good for over nine per game.
Despite the outing from the offense, Rogers kept the Birds right in it. At the end of six innings, he had secured his fifth-consecutive quality start. This time, he cruised through six frames with only 66 pitches thrown, allowing just three hits and striking out seven with no walks in the process.
In the top of the seventh, with the O’s offense struggling to find a rhythm, Andrew Kittredge took the mound for Chicago. Life comes at you fast sometimes. The right-hander proceeded to force an Adley Rutschman flyout, and Tyler O’Neill and Colton Cowser were both punchout victims.
Rogers, though, continued to give Baltimore every opportunity to win this game. Perhaps the O's should've taken his 18 runs of support in his last time out and dispersed things a bit more evenly.
In the eighth, the offense continued to pepper Crow-Armstrong with flyouts to center, but it didn't amount in any runs. Baltimore still trailed 1-0 with just one frame of offense to go.
Rogers still wasn't done. The lefty completed eight dazzling innings, allowing just one run on four hits while punching out eight.
But the Orioles offense couldn't back him up.
This afternoon's ballgame was never going to feel like any other ballgame. Facing a right-handed starting pitcher, Ryan O'Hearn almost certainly would've been in the middle of the lineup. Ramón Laureano mashed everything this year and would've been in there, too. But that's not where the Orioles find themselves.
O'Hearn and Laureano are in San Diego, and the rest of the Orioles are in Chicago trying to figure out a way to win a series. Today, Rogers gave them every opportunity to take Game 1, but the Birds' offense didn't come through.
That's been the case before, as it was when Rogers hit the hill against his former team a few weeks ago. But things aren't really like they were before.
Baltimore has two more chances to come away victorious in Wrigley.